Chapter 421: The Interrogation
The prison had not changed much in the year since Roland arrived.
Mass infrastructure had touched everything above the surface — roads repaved, houses rebuilt, the harbor extended toward the river bend — but down here the renovation money had never come and would not come. Moss colonized the stone walls in long dark streaks. Muddy water wept down the stairs one slow drop at a time, pooling in the corners, smelling of rot and mineral damp.
The cells held almost no one.
With the territory’s expansion, anyone willing to work could find work. Those who refused — the incorrigible scoundrels, the ones who chose idleness as a philosophy — Roland sent to the mines, where the labor reformed their philosophy for them. And since Anna had destroyed the lower floor’s cells in one of the early crises, and there was no pressing reason to repair them, the whole bottom level had been sealed and forgotten. The prison had quietly become a building for storing one or two problems at a time.
Today’s problem sat on the third floor.
Roland followed Iron Axe down the corridor and stopped in front of the cell. He had expected something — a man strung up on a rack, or at least the theatrical evidence of persuasion. Instead the Priest called Campus was huddled in the far corner, arms around his knees, clothes intact, eyes open and pointing nowhere. He looked like a man who had already left his body and was simply waiting for the paperwork to catch up.
“Is he all right?” Roland asked quietly.
“He’s fine, Your Highness.” Iron Axe’s voice carried no particular weight. “You can ask him directly.”
Roland nodded. He had long since decided not to inquire too closely into the Sand Nation’s methods — that was the kind of knowledge that cost more than it paid. He sat on the wooden bench outside the bars and studied the man for a moment before speaking.
“What’s your name?”
Campus’s hollow eyes shifted. Something moved behind them — recognition, and something sharper.
“Are you the Fourth Prince? Roland Wimbledon?” His voice was thin, but not quite broken. “Look what you’ve done. You’ve unleashed the demons’ powers into the world.”
“His Highness asked your name,” Iron Axe said. “If you want to avoid last night, answer the question.”
The Priest’s face went still. A long pause. Then he lowered his head. “Campus.”
“You’re from the Holy City of Hermes.” Not a question — Roland had read the letter taken from the dead witch’s body. “The witch traveling with you. Was she from Hermes as well? What was her role in the church?”
Campus hesitated before answering, the silence long enough that Iron Axe shifted his weight.
“Her name was Aurora,” the Priest said at last. “She was one of Master Tayfun’s Pure Witches. She held no formal position.”
“Tayfun.”
The name landed with the particular weight of something Roland had encountered before but not expected to matter. He turned it over.
“He is one of the three Archbishops of the Holy City,” Campus said, reading the question in his silence. “He manages the church’s external affairs. Second only to the Supreme Pontiff.”
And then it came: the ceremony in King’s City, years ago. King Wimbledon III had thrown a lavish coming-of-age celebration for Tilly, and the church had sent a representative. Tayfun. An old man — genuinely warm in manner, Roland had thought at the time, with the kind of forgiving smile that seemed to have made peace with everything the world had thrown at him. He had looked like a grandfather. He had looked like the last person on earth with hidden witches under his management.
“What is a Pure Witch?”
Another hesitation. Iron Axe did not move, but Campus apparently felt the attention, because the answer came.
“Pure Witches are witches raised by the church directly. They fall under the management of Bishops and the Supreme Pontiff.” A pause. “I don’t know much more than that. They aren’t discussed with people like me.”
Roland scratched behind his ear — the signal. Nightingale’s response was a slight pressure on the air beside him, confirmation: no lie detected.
“How many people know the church maintains its own witches?”
“Master Tayfun told me two years ago. He ordered me to tell no one.” Campus shook his head slowly. “I have no idea how many others know.”
So they kept it close. Roland filed this away with quiet satisfaction. At least they have the decency to recognize the contradiction. The church preached that witches were demons’ servants — corrupt, dangerous, spiritually unclean. It trained its believers to report them, fear them, burn them. And underneath that apparatus, it was cultivating its own supply.
If the believers ever learned that the sermons they had received for generations were not merely simplifications but outright lies — that the church was secretly raising the very creatures it called abominations — the faith would not survive it. This was a weapon. He had just confirmed its existence.
“What was your mission regarding the Lord of Fallen Dragon Ridge? Why take her back to Hermes?”
“I don’t know the exact reason. My assignment was to monitor Aurora — she held the actual orders.” Campus spoke flatly now, as if narrating something that had happened to someone else. “There was a change of plan. Aurora discovered that the lord was herself a witch, and the new Pope issued new orders: all captured witches were to be sent to the Holy City for purification.”
“Purification.” Roland let the word sit. “Do you believe that? If witches purified by the church become Pure Witches, sinless by the church’s own accounting — why does the church hide them?”
“Because… some believers lack sufficient devotion, and for now this is the only way to…” The Priest’s voice dissolved. He closed his mouth.
Roland watched him and said nothing. The man was not stupid. He had simply run out of defenses for a position that had no defense.
“Where were you going after Fallen Dragon Ridge?”
“Redwater City.”
“And after?”
“Impassable Castle.”
“Anywhere else?”
“Just those three.” Campus’s voice had gone entirely flat, the resistance burned away. “Master Tayfun gave us no return date. We were to wait at Impassable Castle for further orders.”
The information matched the letter. “Why those three cities specifically?”
Campus shook his head. He didn’t know.
Roland leaned back on the bench and turned the geography over in his mind. Fallen Dragon Ridge sat in the Southern Territory. Redwater City occupied the kingdom’s center. Impassable Castle lay between the Northern and Western Territories. Three cities with nothing obvious in common — no major trade intersections, no strategic choke points, no particular military value that would explain why a church delegation would fix on them as destinations.
He had been staring at the wrong variable.
What the three cities shared was their relationship to one specific piece of land. Each lay on the border of the Western Territory. Fallen Dragon Ridge — just south of it. Redwater City — just east. Impassable Castle — just north. Three points around a center. Three positions from which a delegation could observe, wait, or approach without appearing to.
Was I the actual target?
The thought arrived with the quiet certainty of a calculation completing.
The interrogation continued until evening, question after question, each answer logged and set beside the ones before it. When Roland finally stood to leave, he noticed that Campus had not moved from his position against the wall — had not begged, had not bargained, had not descended into cursing. He sat as still as a man who had already made his peace.
“Aren’t you going to ask what I intend to do with you?”
Campus did not open his eyes. “You tortured me until I confessed everything.” A pause. “God will bear witness. God is my final judge, not you. What you do with this body doesn’t matter.”
Iron Axe stepped forward. “Your Highness, give me one more night with him. I’ll adjust his thinking.”
“That won’t be necessary.” Roland looked at the Priest one moment longer. The man’s faith was genuine, at least — a genuine faith in something that had systematically lied to him. There was a kind of dignity in it, and a kind of tragedy. “He’s already told us everything he knows.”
He turned toward the stairs.
“You’ll be judged,” he said, without looking back, “not by God. By the people.”